1. Field
The following description relates to a medical image analysis technology, and particularly, to an adaptive computer-aided apparatus and method.
2. Description of Related Art
A computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system refers to a system that analyzes medical images, such as ultrasound images, and displays a suspicious area in the medical images based on the analysis result, thereby assisting doctors in a diagnostic procedure. Diagnosis is a difficult process because of the uncertainty that is caused by human limitations in recognizing an illness. As such, utilizing a CAD system may prove to be advantageous because it not only reduces the probability of the aforementioned dilemma, but also lessens the doctor's workload with regard to deciphering individual diagnostic images.
However, a drawback of a CAD system is that it detects a region of interest (ROI) in each image frame and tracks or classifies the detected ROI in each image frame, thus making the CAD system difficult to operate in real time. In addition, since the CAD system generally employs the same detection/classification algorithm regardless of the speed of a moving probe or the resolution of an image, it is functionally impossible to promptly provide a detection/classification result or to perform real-time close examination on a salient area while the probe is moving.